Amandla Stenberg’s Star Wars fit

The Acolyte premieres next week, the latest entry into New New Star Wars which looks back to a time before Skywalkers. It looks promising, and I can’t wait to see if creator and showrunner Leslye Headland found a story path for Star Wars free of Skywalkers and original trilogy connections.

There was a splashy event in London yesterday for the series, and pretty much everyone except Jodie Turner-Smith turned out for it, including star Amandla Stenberg, who is doing the least irritating version of theme dressing.

The slinky dress, the high braid and hair jewelry—she looks like she could be hanging around in the background of one of the rich planets in a Star Wars movie, but she isn’t literally dressed like a Jedi. It’s an outfit that says, “I am the star of a sci-fi show”, not “I am sci-fi”. I also dig Leslye Headland’s patterned top and trousers, and I did a double take when I saw Dafne Keene, who I have not seen since she was eleven and starring in Logan. She’s grown-ish (19) and wearing a dress Angelina Jolie would love.

As for the dudes, Manny Jacinto wore basic black and Lee Jung-jae crisp white, while Charlie Barnett split the difference in spangled silver. I wonder if this was coordinated? If not, it’s quite a coincidence their looks coordinate so cleanly. There was also a Wookie on the red carpet, “Kelnacca”, a new character devised for the series. In the show, Kelnacca is portrayed by Finnish actor Joonas Suotamo, who took over playing Chewbacca from Peter Mayhew during the filming of the sequel trilogy. I don’t know if that’s Suotamo at the premiere, but even if it’s a random super tall person, it lowkey annoys me when the Star Wars people insist on doing this.

It takes a person to play a Wookie, it takes people to puppet droids, but these characters will show up at premieres and interact as if they’re real, which is neat for five minutes but ultimately robs the people whose labor goes into creating the characters of their moment of recognition. It’s like if the character shows up, the person can’t, too. For the record, Joonas Suotamo was not at this event. Anyway, I’m looking forward to The Acolyte and Amandla Stenberg gets bonus points for doing theme dressing right.